Ah, Oscar season. A time when, with the Golden Globes far enough in the past that we’ve all but forgotten who won what, a filmgoer’s speculative tendencies spark anew. Will Jeff Bridges—a winner for playing a boozy country singer last year—repeat in the Best Actor category for his turn as a boozy country gunslinger? Will there be riots in Boston if The Fighter is overlooked? If it wins?
All in good time. For now, the run-up to the Sunday award ceremony means one last chance to catch up on some of the smaller films you likely haven’t had the opportunity to see over the last year. Because while the bigger names—your True Grits, Black Swans, et al—have been in area theaters for some time, this week their smaller, scrappier brethren invade Northampton’s Pleasant Street Theater. Opening the Friday before the big show, the 2011 Oscar Shorts festival gives the curious filmgoer a full slate of animated and live-action nominees that add a little necessary spice to the richer fare of the Academy.
First, the nominees from the Live Action category. For some reason, this year’s crop seems decidedly tied up with ideas of morality, perhaps as a response to the common and prejudicial view that equates short subjects with a lack of gravitas. At any rate, they get underway with The Confession, director Tanel Toom’s light-into-dark film about a boy’s first experience with the sacrament, and the tragedy that results. In a similar vein, The Crush deals with an eight-year-old so taken with his schoolteacher that he plots to kill her boyfriend. Kids today.
Things get slightly more adult—in age, if not subject matter—with Wish 143, about a cancer-stricken teen whose Make-A-Wish style request is to lose his virginity. God of Love, meanwhile, stars writer/director Luke Matheny as a wannabe lothario who comes into possession of a pack of darts that, like Cupid’s arrows, inspire love. Matheny’s film has drawn some comparisons—both good and bad—to Woody Allen’s neurotic tales of modern romance. And finally there is Na Wewe, Ivan Goldschmidt’s story about civil war in Burundi, a Central African country near Rwanda. In it, an overloaded passenger van is stopped by a band of rebels who demand that the riders separate into groups by ethnicity—a demand that soon proves the absurdity of the conflict.
Also screening at Pleasant Street are the nominees in the Animation category, a designation that causes many viewers to heave a sigh of relief: no more murderous pre-teens! Instead, the animated shorts seem to reflect that pure kind of wonder that so often gets people interested in art and filmmaking in the first place. These are films that are done first and foremost as labors of love.
Day & Night leads off the parade. From the Pixar house—which, though huge now, got its start in the short format—director Teddy Newton’s film imagines Day and Night as living beings who run across each other unexpectedly. At first uneasy, the pair quickly discover each other’s charming sides. Also on tap is Let’s Pollute, a short and sometimes heavy-handed satire that draws inspiration from ’50s-era educational films to teach us how to “be better polluters.”
Andrew Ruhemann and Shaun Tan fare better with The Lost Thing, about a boy who discovers an enormous, tentacled, boiler-like creature on the beach. Despite its outlandish appearance (and predisposition for playing fetch) the creature seems to go unnoticed by most of the local populace, who are too wrapped up in their own lives to notice the oddity around them. Things wrap up with Madagascar, Carnet De Voyage and The Gruffalo. The first—not to be confused with the mass-market Madagascar series—is a look at the vibrant traditional customs in Malagasy culture, while The Gruffalo rounds up a voice cast of actors from the Harry Potter films to tell the tale of a mouse on the move, using his wits to survive a pack of predators.
There you have it. In a time when you could see none of the feature films and still have an idea which might win, I encourage you to see these smaller works. You might see them all and still be surprised when the envelope is opened.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.